David Shneer schreibt auf jewcy darüber, was die Gründe dafür sein könnten, dass das Reformjudentum in Russland nicht übermäßig erfolgreich ist, Chabad aber schon. Natürlich ist das in erster Linie ein Vergleich der Arbeitsweise der beiden Strömungen und es ist kein Geheimnis, dass Chabad hervorragende Kontakte in den Kreml hat und von den richtigen Leuten finanziert wird.

As I and my co-author Caryn Aviv write in our recent book, New Jews, for most of the 1980s, while most American Jews were chanting “Let My People Go” in order to “save” Soviet Jewry, Chabad was already building an underground infrastructure for Jewish life in the Soviet Union. When Communism fell apart, Chabad was there ready to inherit a post-Communist Russia. While American Reform Jews were paying for plane flights and teaching new immigrants English, Chabad brought Judaism to Jews in the former atheist state. von hier

Shneer ist nicht zimperlich mit seiner Beurteilung der Lage und genau diese präsisen Beobachtungen können uns hier auch behilflich sein, sind doch hier Gemeinden mit einem großem Anteil von russischen Juden…

Russian Reform leadership is trained on a western model of Jewish community and religious pluralism. Since there are no Reform seminaries in Russia all Russian Jews who get trained as Reform rabbis end up in one of three places—the U.S., Israel or England (and recently the Reform movement began ordaining rabbis in Germany). This means that Russia’s Reform rabbis are trained as western rabbis and then “sent back.” Farbman and Shulman, for instance, both trained at Leo Baeck in London, learning the ins and outs of western Reform Judaism, including its vision of the rabbinate. Each returned to Russia for personal and professional reasons, and each has now called the Russian Reform rabbinate quits for personal and professional reasons. Reform rabbis are trained to be educators and to give pastoral care, but ultimately many of them see their primary role as CEOs of the Jewish community, appointed by wealthy boards of donors, and charged with the operations of the community. For Reform Judaism, at least in its American and British forms, the rabbinate is a job, not a calling.

Auch hier geht es darum, wie Outreach eigentlich funktioniert:

Second, as long as Reform Jewish communities rely solely on local wealth to build synagogues, Russian Reform is going to have a hard time. Farbman built the St. Petersburg synagogue with funds from the West End Synagogue in London, at which he was an assistant rabbi before moving to St. Petersburg. Local Russian Jews in Moscow and St. Petersburg have a hard time fathoming paying hundreds of thousands of rubles in membership dues to build their communities. Chabad has a much more global funding model and gets people involved before it ever asks for money.

Letztendlich hat der Erfolg von Chabad nichts mit dem Judentum zu tun, welches sie transportieren (was keine Wertung implizieren soll), sondern wie sie es transportieren. Hier ist schon oft darüber geschrieben worden, aber Chabad arbeitet effektiv und nutzt Ressourcen und es gibt kein Copyright auf diese Methode. Warum wird sie also nicht häufiger eingesetzt?